


Understanding Home

by LMX



Series: Understanding [4]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Deaf Clint Barton, Families of Choice, Gen, Getting to Know Each Other, Rescue Missions, SHIELD, Snipers, badasses being badass
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-27
Updated: 2018-06-09
Packaged: 2019-04-13 18:01:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14117886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LMX/pseuds/LMX
Summary: It's been years since Clint left Phil's outpost for the SHIELD academy and he's called a lot of places home since then, but there's something special in going home to family, even if it's a family you've chosen for yourself.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Maybe if we're all lucky this one won't take literal years to finish?
> 
> Takes place after Barney, and before Aftermath (if you needed that clearing up).

Clint flipped his glasses down and activated the heads-up display as he scanned the collection of warehouses that made up the walled compound. On the furthest sun-baked building, another sniper and spotter team were doing the same thing. Waiting and watching, watching and waiting.

The HUD finally loaded, text crawling across his vision as someone back on base transcribed the general channel audio. "Command, this is ground team, the complex is clear. No sign of the target, or our operative."

"Ground leader, we had confirmation on-site from our operative as of this morning, and eyes on the site since then. Reconfirm."

A blinking light on the HUD represented the pause in response, and Clint scanned the compound again, checking every door and window. Flashes of movement inside were confirmed to be SHIELD personnel, darting around as they re-checked the building was empty.

"Command, all clear on six counts - that's every building clear top to bottom, sir. We've got two sniper teams in place, there's no chance anyone's flown the coop since we walked through the front door."

Clint glanced over his shoulder at Jacobson, knowing he would have heard the confusion over comms, and raising an eyebrow. His spotter shrugged - nothing they could do right now - and went back to his scope.

Clint was halfway back to eyes-front when unexpected movement caught his attention. There were two concealed doors being thrown open on a building at the far end of the compound. Six men were storming out, one of them with a limp body thrown over his shoulder.

He slapped Jacobson's arm to get his attention, pushing the glasses up and out of the way as he shifted his rifle for a better angle on the action. Jacobson would tell Command what they could see, and let Clint know when he had free-to-fire, he just had to be ready.

There were two Jeeps in the corner of the compound, but there was only one entrance and the escaping group would have to drive a long way to get there. They had to know it was being covered. Unless there was another entrance which was concealed with the same trick as the building...

Jacobson put the palmtop down by Clint's rifle rest, the screen showing; "F.R. Tire x2, dist 390 yds, w/s 2.5 - trigger free."

Despite all the training and three months working with Jacobson as his spotter, Clint was still working on making sense of being given numbers for range and wind speed - it didn't feel like useful information to waste time typing when he could see the target and all the same signals to read the wind speed for himself. Still, it felt too good to have someone at his back to debate the way they did it, and Jacobson had been doing this longer than he had.

The two front right tires were shot out neatly and precisely in less time than it had taken to receive the command. Clint didn't wait to see the shots land, swinging across to track the reactions of the escaping targets. Two of the soldiers had moved to form a barrier, eyes scanning the buildings and rooftops, with another leading the unit towards the Jeeps and the one loaded down with their prisoner taking up the rear. That left one man covered from all directions. It seemed like one of the six was worth protecting, probably the boss that they were here to capture, and Clint carefully noted his build and hair colour to be able to pick him out of the group again. They were all still moving towards the vehicles, and Clint made two more shots even as Jacobson finished typing the word 'engine'.

He nudged Clint's shoulder gently, a reprimand for not waiting for the rest of the command but careful enough not to disrupt his aim. He'd be hearing about that later, when the action was over.

The group on the ground paused, their exit blocked with two engines gently smoking from the bullet holes in their hoods. There was a breathless moment, and then the boss and the two beside him bolted for the Jeeps' cover, leaving two of the men scanning the rooftops, weapons to their shoulders and seeking targets as the burdened one stood shouting - mouth wide and face flushed red.

Jacobson wrote out: "Prisoner ours, no kill shots, drop the rest."

Clint dropped the one carrying the SHIELD Agent first, hoping the friendly didn't hit the ground too hard alongside their captor, and tagged another as he dove into cover. He checked quickly on the Agent sprawled out on the ground, hood over their head, before he started tracking movement around the closest Jeep, hoping for a clean shot.

He got a shot through a jeep window into the meat of a visible shoulder as the target moved forwards, and could picture the Academy trainer's face reminding him how risky that was, when glass could so easily alter the path of the bullet; but the shot was clean, just as he'd known it would be.

Another bullet skidded off the near side of the Jeep from the other sniper post. They were at too awkward an angle to make a useful shot but two of the targets lurched to the side as the shot landed - only to come into Clint's line of fire. He caught one through the knee before they realised their mistake, and only just missed the chance to take a shot on other.

With only two of the guards still standing, the leader scrambled forwards, sticking determinedly to cover as he grabbed the unconscious Agent by the ankle and hauled them back between the two Jeeps. As he dragged the still body across the ground the hood was pulled up and Clint lurched forwards instinctively as Natasha's face was revealed, nearly displacing his rifle from the lintel.

Command hadn't told the incursion team who they were there to recover, and Natasha's identity was still a level two clearance matter, so Clint wouldn't have found out either way. It had been nearly a year since they'd seen each other in person, talking intermittently through video calls scheduled around their respective missions. He hadn't even realised she was missing.

Jacobson nudged his shoulder and gave him a questioning look when he glanced back. Clint shook his head in response, scanning the complex, hoping to see the ground crew moving in. Jacobson would have informed Command of what they were seeing, but the other SHIELD Agents were nowhere to be seen, and the remaining targets could do a lot of damage to Natasha if they decided she wasn't worth keeping as a hostage.

The decision was made without any more thought.

"Hostage in danger," he sketched out in military hand-signs, moving back from his position on the rifle. "Going in, cover me."

He had time to catch Jacobson's look of denial before he clipped into his rap line on the rig they'd built when they'd first arrived, threw his rope and jumped over the edge.

He would be visible to the men under cover if they cared to look his way, but none of them had been carrying anything heavy enough to reach him, so he didn't even bother to check as he landed, diving into cover against the next building. He threw a thumbs up at Jacobson, who'd taken a stance behind Clint's rifle, but was peering over the edge of the building at him. Jacobson offered him his middle finger in reply, then pulled back behind the rifle's scope. Clint pulled out his side-arm, fingers itching for a bowstring as he ducked out of cover and crossed the length of the first building.

He was getting into firing range as he ducked in next to the building the group of soldiers had exited. He dropped low and took a look at the scene. No one appeared to be looking his way - at least three of the soldiers were unconscious, or at least not moving on the ground, and the boss seemed to be focusing on Natasha. That was not a good thing.

Jacobson and the other sniper were firing intermittently - sparks as their shots dug into the concrete and into the side of the Jeeps from two distinct angles, keeping the targets pinned down and their attention off Clint. There were a couple of shots Clint might have thought about taking from the other sniper post, poor though the angle might be, but he was on the ground so he was going to have to think creatively.

He waited for the next shot - sparks across the ground - and crossed the yard at a sprint as the targets ducked behind cover again. There were still no signs of movement from Natasha, and Clint willed this fact out of his mind as he met the outer wall and ducked low.

If any of the hostiles had seen him move, they'd be shooting his way any minute now, but from his new position he could only see backs. A hundred feet to a clear shot on the two still standing, he just had to make sure he wasn't noticed in the meantime. He had no cover left, just the wall behind him and the Jeeps in front. If they saw him coming he'd have to rely on them breaking cover and giving Jacobson or one of the others a shot at them.

He forced his breathing flat and slow, willing his feet quiet as he braced to make a move.

Moments later he hit the ground hard, a brick in the wall in front of him exploding into dust. It only took the briefest glance to track its path back, past the still-oblivious targets to a bullet graze in the road in front of the first Jeep. And he had ricochet to worry about. Great.

He scrambled up, not wasting any more time as he readied his handgun. He gave up all attempts at subtlety, aiming to get into position before...

One of the remaining men glanced his way, his arm coming up and Clint not quite in position. He made the two shots even as the muzzle facing him flashed, diving behind the cover of the second Jeep, not entirely sure he hadn't been hit.

He was sure there had been a plan somewhere back there - maybe when he'd still been on the roof, but it was gone now. He didn't have cuffs on him, and there were six men back there in various states of consciousness and injury, all of them armed. He dropped to one knee to glance around the bulk of the Jeep, making himself as small a target as possible.

He was just in time to see Natasha kick the lead target viciously in the head. Now he was closer, Clint could see that the man's skin was an odd shade of ruddy orange that set him apart from the others. The intel had suggested he might be a person of interest to SHIELD's more obscure departments, seemed like it was right.

He scanned the others, stepping out of cover to kick a gun away from the hand of the soldier nearest to him. Natasha turned his way, just staring for a long moment before she made an aborted movement with her hands. She looked down, as if surprised to find her hands ziptied together, and then offered them to him.

Clint untangled the redundant earpiece and its battery pack from the front of his uniform, tucking it into Natasha's hand before pulling out a knife to start on her bindings. Her skin was rubbed raw under the rough plastic, and her hands were pale and cold as it came free, but she wasted no time getting the earpiece situated. She was already talking to someone in field command as she pulled a bundle of zipties from the pack one of the soldiers was carrying and handed half to Clint. She shot him an amused smile, a startling change from the serious working-face she'd had on a moment ago, and Clint wondered what the tech was saying.

Whoever it was, they were probably startled to have the line suddenly filled with someone talking and listening - it had always been a bit of a joke, having to sign off on his transcript, inevitably a blank sheet of letterheaded and classified-stamped paper. He didn't even wear the tech in his ear, already taken up with SHIELD issue hearing aids, it just got velcroed into the front of his vest.

All six men were restrained and their guns set aside when the ground team finally made it across the yard from the building.

The leader of the operation, Agent Markham had a seriously intimidating stare, and Clint busied himself making sure none of the captives were bleeding out to avoid getting that glare full on. He could still feel it burning into the back of his neck as he worked.

The extraction team were rolling in on the other side of the two bullet-marked Jeeps, a team of techs already swarming around the previously concealed door, trying to figure out how it worked. A couple of medics moved Clint out of the way to start working triage on the six men who'd been shot down, making sure they survived long enough to get them back to base.

Clint was running out of things to busy himself with when Natasha slapped at his arm, and handed him off to Markham with a vindictive grin. Markham looked apoplectic with rage, and it took him repeatedly pointing between Clint and Clint's station to realise it was aimed at him. He was yelling, and Clint found himself trying to remember who'd made up their briefing group. The sniper teams had been briefed separately by field command - there had been something with a high confidentiality level in the main briefing, most likely Natasha's involvement - was it possible Markham hadn't even glanced at the files on his snipers?

The others on the ground team were all people Clint had worked with and spent time with; they were all looking a little uncomfortable - one or two suppressed grins too, in Clint's periphery. Clint knew better than to give in to the urge to join them. That never helped this kind of situation. Best thing would be if Markham worked himself to some kind of close and stalked off, feeling like he'd won the argument.

Clint didn't allow himself to glance at Natasha for support, but had to swallow down a grimace as one of the other Agents stepped up, just as Markham started stabbing an aggressive finger in Clint's direction. He turned on the other Agent, still red-faced from the yelling, his lips twisting unpleasantly as he listened to what was being said. Damn, Clint could have done without a publicly-embarrassed Senior Agent on his case, and it was pretty obvious from Markham's expression as he glanced back Clint's way that the man wasn't going to let this drop easily, embarrassed or not.

As if making up his mind, Markham nodded once and called another one of the ground team over, gesturing at Clint. As the Agent approached with a ziptie and a discretely signed 'sorry', Markham rounded on Natasha instead. Clint allowed a smirk to creep over his features at Natasha's look of shocked annoyance, even as the other Agent cuffed Clint securely.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was so amused by how hate there is for Markham. XD You guys are out for blood.

Clint was still grinning as Natasha barged her way onto the transport behind Jacobson, her body language suggesting she'd had to fight to get in. There was a band-aid in the crook of her elbow and the graze on her cheekbone had been cleaned up - it was probably the medical team that had tried to keep hold of her. She took a seat next to Jacobson on the truck's bench seat and introduced herself to Clint's spotter, cueing smoothly.

Jacobson was tracking her cueing hand with a confused frown but he offered his own to shake, introducing himself with the sign-name Clint had given him. He recognised the word 'spotter' on his lips, and Jacobson gestured at him in a way that looked like it might have been part of a rude comment, softened only by his grin.

Natasha glanced his way, rolling her eyes at him. "Stupid boy," she cued carefully, and Clint noticed how bruised her knuckles were, now that her skin was flush with blood again. "Do you want your hands?" she asked, adding in sign; "Cuffs off?" which he appreciated, because he was coming down off a great adrenaline buzz, and even her cueing wasn't helping his lipreading comprehension much. Everything was getting lost somewhere between that-word-is and that-word-means.

Markham had been pretty angry when he'd put the cuffs on him, and Clint didn't want to risk making him angrier for the sake of talking with Natasha, so he shook his head, rolling his shoulders to keep the hands behind his back from stiffening up.

Jacobson was asking a question, his eyes bright and curious on Natasha as she looked away to answer him. Jacobson did have enough of a clearance level to know about Natasha, and Clint - with his trainee clearance level - wasn't sure if he should be denying he knew she existed or just keeping it to himself, but Natasha wasn't hiding that they knew one another. Maybe what she was saying was classified over Clint's head, but she kept signing, hands tucked in small next to her body. She was doing it to include him, Clint knew, and he let himself revel in the old familiar warmth he'd missed since the Academy. He'd missed her.

"A guard sounded the alarm as SHIELD arrived. Asshole had some kind of mind-control, they found me and drugged me."

Natasha's lips were taut and thin, and Clint resisted the urge to move to sit beside her. Natasha *hated* drugs, and was worse for having them forced on her. Now he was looking closer, Clint could see the uneasy twitch in her sore fingers and the stiffness in her shoulders. She glanced his way and offered him a wry smile. Her hands said: "I'm okay. You were there."

Half a dozen Agents from the ground team, plus the other sniper team, all piled into the transport, and the vehicle was suddenly full. The engine rattled to life and a couple of Agents slapped Clint on the shoulder and offered him a thumbs-up. Richards from the other sniper team took a seat on the other side of Jacobson, pressing Natasha further into the corner, and carefully finger-spelled through: "Sorry, ricochet, close," grinning with an embarrassed flush.

Clint just smile, shaking his head when a field technician offered a pair of bolt cutters for the zipties. Natasha was watching the interactions, and Clint wondered what she must think of this strange unit, nearly twenty of them in the two trucks and five more watching over the newest prisoners, when she was so used to working alone or with just one or two specialists.

Obviously still hyped from the aborted action, the group turned their attentions on Natasha next, full of questions.

His own adrenaline fading fast, Clint rearranged his hands behind him and shut his eyes, hoping for at least a small nap as the transport lurched away, before he had to face his superiors.

-

The transport lumbered to a stop, the engine stilling almost immediately. Clint came back to awareness with the shift of the Agents around him. A lot of the tension had gone out of Natasha's shoulders, but she was still holding herself stiffly.

She didn't leave with the others, holding back with him and Jacobson as the truck emptied. Clint wanted her to go to medical more than he needed her defence against Markham, but he didn't have a way to tell her that right now, and she was still talking to Jacobson, not even glancing his way.

The two of them looked up towards the back of the truck and stood, Natasha gesturing for Clint to follow them. Getting up was awkward with the post-nap lethargy making his legs wobbly and his arms still bound behind him, but he made it out into the SHIELD base yard without stumbling, squinting into the sunlight.

As the details resolved around him, he realised he was back 'home' for the first time in almost four years, since he'd left to attend the academy and been incorporated into the sniper pool upon graduating. He hadn't caught where the mission was based from the briefing, and he'd only glanced at the briefing packet. The drop-off point had been coded, and he was only now realising he'd come all this way, working out of SHIELD bases all over the world, and never known the code for the base he'd once called home.

Natasha glanced back at him, then turned and signed "Welcome home," before following Jacobson and Markham across the yard. Clint followed, trying to avoid the distraction of cataloguing every change in his surroundings.

Clint hadn't been in touch with Phil since his graduation out of the Academy to a Trainee post, and Clint had been shuttled off to another base almost immediately after the ceremony to pair up with Jacobson for his first mission. He'd stuck with Jacobson as his supervisory officer since then, but as a team they got moved all over. He'd been with the Washington Unit for three months, and faces were starting to get familiar, but the rotation of staff was fluid all over SHIELD.

Clint had no idea if Phil was still in charge here, or if he'd moved on to another division. There was only limited communications allowed between the separate SHIELD units, and Clint was still too junior to have access to personnel files. He was nervous as he was marched through the outpost, through familiar halls until he faced the SAIC's secretary's desk. Clint could see Stephanie's cloud of curls even over Jacobson's shoulder, and the relief put a grin on his face.

Stephanie gave him a sharp look as they approached her desk, but Clint knew her too well to be cowed, and the glare didn't last as she lifted the handset to tell Phil they were waiting. When they moved forwards again, Stephanie waited until Markham was out of sight inside Phil's office before getting his attention with a flapping hand and offering a quick- 'welcome back!' and a wide grin of her own.

His grin didn't fade as he followed the others into Phil's office. Jacobson stood shoulder to shoulder with him as Phil looked up from his papers with feigned disinterest. The look was easy to see through for anyone who knew him, and Clint bit the inside of his lip to force his own expression flat and professional.

Phil didn't meet his eyes, or Natasha's, as Markham started reporting, and Clint wondered if he was worried about catching the grin that was going around, or if he was actually angry at them. Markham escalated quickly into a rant, his hands waving and face flushing. Phil just leaned back in his desk chair, looking bored. Eventually he put a hand up and stopped Markham, and almost immediately waved again to stop Jacobson who had leant forward to add something.

"Everybody stop," he said, signing as well, and something in Clint released with the realisation he'd half expected Phil to have forgotten how to sign while he'd been away. It would have been fine, he'd been living with people who didn't for a while now, and he got by; he was even starting to lipread more fluently, especially if someone could cue for him. It was nice, though, to know Phil remembered.

Phil's attention turned fully on him, to ask; "Are you hurt?"

Clint shook his head before looking pointedly at Natasha. Phil was frowning at him when he looked back, and he turned to Markham after a moment, holding out a demanding hand.

Markham shook his head, and Phil looked angry again as he pulled a knife from the sheath he kept in the back of his belt. He handed the knife over his desk to Jacobson, and Clint let himself be turned so his hands could be released.

"Natasha was drugged, she's hurt." The signs came out all-at-once as his hands came free. Clint's fingers odd and sluggish after the restriction.

Phil frowned. "You broke position, ignored orders and put the target at risk. Debrief first."

"I broke position," Clint admitted. "Jacobson relays my orders..." Phil interrupted him to confirm the sign name and Clint flushed with embarrassment, finger-spelling his SO's title and full name the way he should have done in the first place. Being in front of Phil was throwing him back. "Jacobson stayed on the roof, with the rifle. The target wasn't at risk, Natasha was at risk."

"Your last received orders?" Phil asked.

"Prisoner ours, no kill shots," Clint replied easily.

"And your standing orders?"

"Set up on the roof, clear the compound, cover the ground team's exit with the prisoners."

There was a flicker of a smile on Phil's lips as he turned to Jacobson, his hands stilling as he questioned Clint's Supervisory Agent. Markham looked impatient, not quite disrespectful enough to fidget in front of a superior officer, but his body language was as rude as it could be.

Phil nodded at Jacobson and turned to include the two of them. "Thank you for retrieving my operative safely. Barton, communicate with your SO before acting. Agent Jacobson, don't let your Trainee leave you on a roof without backup, especially when you're the only post with line of sight. Trust the system, command knows more than can be seen on the ground."

"Yes, sir," Clint replied, shamed by Phil's reference to his Trainee position. It was a title he wouldn't shed until he'd passed his GED.

"The two of you, write up your after actions in the corridor outside my office. You have two hours to deliver them to me. Then you're free to go."

Phil's head snapped to Markham, who was raising a pointing finger, his face reddening in frustration. He withered under Phil's calm glare.

"Romanoff, get to medical," he added. "You can come back for Barton at five."

The three of them left the room quickly, leaving Phil to finish his conversation with Agent Markham.

-

Writing up a report which would have had to be done eventually anyway was hardly the worst punishment that Clint had been given since joining SHIELD, but a time limit and nothing but a pen and the printed sheet put it up there.

Clint had come to SHIELD with no English - read or written - and had two years of pretty eclectic schooling between the Doctor of Linguistics who'd taught him to sign, read and write, and the assorted Agents who'd all given up their spare time to tutor him. He'd left having only just graduated from the 'This is Spot, Spot is a dog' school of literature and after six months of remedial studies had been thrown into a class of thirty five aspiring and competitive SHIELD trainees.

Being scared to the point of nausea over an after-action report was a thing of the past, but he was used to a computer to check his spelling and grammar, and at least twenty four hours to draft and check and re-draft the thing. He glanced up from the still-blank form and caught Stephanie grinning his way. He remembered Stephanie presenting him with "Spot Goes To The Playground" after Barbera asked around for reading-level appropriate material and nearly sinking into the carpet in embarrassment.

Phil's office door opened sharply enough that it looked like it might have bounced off the wall, Jacobson startling a little. Agent Markham left the room red-faced and tight-lipped, staring straight ahead as he passed the little crowd in the hallway. Phil got up from his desk to retrieve the door, sparing a moment to smile at them both as he shut the door again.

It sank in - a little late, really - that this would be the first piece of SHIELD paperwork he'd ever hand in to Phil. He was beginning to remember that nauseous phase he'd gone through.

Jacobson elbowed him in the side and carefully signed through: "Name, date, mission parameters." He looked down at the paper in his hands, trying to shake off the nerves that made the printed words blurry. He carefully filled in his name, the date and the mission parameters. The easy bits, to get started; his SO had coached him through this more than once, but not in a while. The big empty box at the bottom loomed, and Clint put it off by filling in all the peripheral information, obsessing over every word until even obvious spellings looked wrong.

He glanced up at the clock and grimaced when it told him half their time was gone. He was wrong, this was definitely one of the worst punishments he'd had. Jacobson's form looked almost complete, his report trailing over from the box on the front onto the back of the form. He noticed Clint looking and pointed back at Clint's empty report, his 'get on with it' nice and clear.

He narrowed his eyes when Clint didn't even look down, and then put his report down on the seat beside him and headed over towards Stephanie. He came back moments later with a sheet of paper he'd taken from the printer, scribbling 'Draft' at the top of it and putting it down on top of the clipboard Clint had been using as a desk.

Nodding his thanks, Clint racked his brain for all the report-writing tips he'd ever been given and put his pen to the paper.

An hour later, Clint was hurriedly copying out the last line of his draft with Jacobson's careful corrections. As Phil's door opened, Jacobson screwed up the draft sheet and discretely dropped it into the waste basket by the end of the row of chairs.

They stood together and Phil nodded as he took the reports from them, glancing over the information. He passed them back to Stephanie and then turned back to the two of them with a grin. "Go. Well done today."


End file.
